Organizations that maintain and manufacture data centers face increasing bandwidth demands. In particular, the bandwidth requirement for typical data center switches is increasing dramatically due to the growth in data center size and due to the shift to higher bandwidth link standards, such as 10 Gb, 40 Gb, and 100 Gb Ethernet standards. However, simply sealing up the bandwidth of existing electronic switch designs can be problematic. The scope for increasing the data rate of electronic signals is often limited by signal integrity considerations. Also, increasing the bandwidth of data paths increases cost and may be impractical. The energy efficiency of elements of the data center has become an important consideration, because as data rates increase a greater proportion of the power consumed by network switches can be attributed to electronic interconnects. Moreover, electronic switched fabrics typically used to handle switching in a data center, use point-to-point flow control on each individual link. As a result, flow control is buffered on every link in order to avoid data loss. Switch manufacturers and users continue to seek interconnect solutions for switches that provide for several generations of bandwidth scaling at reduced interconnect power, without increasing overall system cost.